Stratford++

So we were supposed to leave for Stratford at about 5:30 the Friday before spring break. Some of the people [Jason and Brian] were going to be there loading at like 2:30, and I figured I should probably be there to help out a little bit too because they had NO idea how they were going to load the truck, basically, and this was the first time. I saw Keith earlier that day and told him that people were loading at 2:30 and that he should be there then.

So I was dragging my feet a little bit and it took me a while to get there, but I think I left my dorm for the Blue Band Building at about 3 that day. I walked up Shortlidge Road to a bus station and took a White Loop bus. I had my backpack with me, as well as a sleeping bag that I kept inside a pillowcase and a bag with all my clothes [the bag I won at GV Post Prom]. In the back of my backpack, in the smallest pocket, closed, and inside its case, also closed, was my camera. Two pockets away from that were my mittens, my hat, and a bottle of water. I also brought three packed lunches and cinnamon rolls and maybe teddy grahams or poptarts, I'm not sure.

So I got off somewhere near East Halls - or at least I thought - because I knew that BBB was somewhere around there. But once I got off the bus and oriented myself, I realized I was VERY FAR from where I wanted to be. Did I mention that it was really cold and it was raining a lot? It was. So I walked down basically a small highway [might as well have been 202] with all my stuff in the rain, then all the way up the BBB driveway - I think it took me twenty minutes in all so it was probably something like a mile. My shoes and socks were soaked through with very cold water by the time I got to the building.

So we loaded and it took a long time but we did actually get everything on the bus. I talked to Justin a lot - the youngest bass drummer - and it turns out he remembered our Synthesis show, which I thought was pretty interesting. At about 5:20, we were all loaded and ready to go, but people were hanging out for a little bit. At about 5:30, people were about to go, but Adam ["rack boy"] and myself didn't go yet because our driver wasn't there yet. We waited about ten minutes, then Mike D called him, and he said that he was picking up Suzi and that he'd be there soon. Ten minutes later he still wasn't there, so we called again, and he said that Suzi was putting her stuff in his trunk and he'd be there in a minute. About five minutes later, he finally showed up, and he ended up taking Suzi and I instead of Adam and I [Adam ended up going with Keith, our timpanist]. So by the time we got everything in order to go, it was 6:00. Already half an hour late.

So we left then, and I was told that we were going to Sheetz for food. I really really wanted to change my socks because they were still wet and freezing three hours later [they were painful at that point], but since I was getting out again into cold wet rain, I figured I'd wait. People took a really long time at Sheetz, but once we got back in the car I changed my socks to warm ones and it was WONDERFUL. We got on the road again. Probably five minutes later, our driver tensed up and shouted an obscenity - he'd forgotten his uniform. So we had to drive twenty minutes back and twenty minutes to the same spot to get on our way again, and everyone waited for us. So now we're like 1h10m late.

The drive wasn't too bad for a while - rainy and foggy but that's alright. We listened to Suzi's iPod basically the entire time, and Dan used his iPhone to navigate whenever we were feeling a little lost. Then, sometime around midnight, we were trying to get onto I95, the last road before getting into Stratford. The directions were a little confusing, so we kept trying to get off at an Exit 8, but it didn't lead to the road we were looking for. So we went down the Exit 9, got back on, came down the other direction, and tried again. We did this a few times and couldn't figure it out. We finally got frustrated and pulled to the side of the road and tried to use our directions or iPhone to navigate, but I just called Cass and Brian and they told us what to do, so we got on our way again. We were probably held up like 30 minutes with this whole ordeal.

So then we got on 95 and were looking for our exit, found it, and got off so we were in Stratford. The school was about five minutes away. But we couldn't see anything, and it was really hard to navigate, so we ended up driving around startford for like fourty minutes before we found where we were supposed to go. We actually had to drive the wrong way on a one way road to get where we needed to - okay, well, we didn't HAVE to, but we chose to because it made our lives about 100x easier and we would have been even later if it hadn't been for that.

So we were supposed to leave at 5:30, meaning we'd get there at 10:30, but instead we got there at 1AM, so we were about 2.5 hours late overall, which was wonderful because we had to wake up at 7 the next morning and we had to sleep on a school's gym floor. Thankfully I brought a sleeping bag - I considered going without it. Our director turned the lights out and it got very dark instantly, and we all pretty much went to bed as soon as we could then.

The next morning, Brett [the director] turned the lights on at 7 on the dot. He turned them on and people moaned and groaned and didn't really move, and then Brett said, "DO IT. GET UP." and all 33 of us jumped up immediately. We had until 7:30 to clear the gym, so we all moved really fast - I ended up eating and brushing my teeth at the same time. We were all pretty tired that day.

I don't want to write too much detail abou the competition part of the day because it wasn't too interesting. We practiced in the morning with Brian Stoudt [drill writer], had to move gyms, then loaded, then drove and got lost again. We unloaded into "a dungeon" at the basement of Brunnel HS because it was raining, and we stayed in an art room. Our first show was okay, but it sounded weird because there was very little echo and that made us play reserved. We didn't go back to the other school as planned because we didn't have enough time because finals got moved up, so we sang our parts instead. I got cookies delivered to me at lunch. Boston was there and I saw Ian Flint and I think I saw Gabe Cobas too, but I'm not sure. There were two schools practicing at any given time. Dartmouth was there and we watched their show in the auditorium on the screen when Franco told us we could and they had a breakdancer and we were confused. I think they made fun of one of our players and I was upset with them. Jason and Sean disappeared and we made jokes about that. A girl in the audience was enamored with Adam. Our second show was more confident and we did a little better but felt like it still wasn't perfect.

//

After our second show, I really wanted to get food I packed and get my coats because I was cold and get my camera and charge my dying cell phone. To do any of those things, I needed to get into my driver's car. So when we were about to perform, I told him about that, and he said we could go later. So I asked him when we were loading and he said he needed to talk to his brother and the snare drummers first, so he did that. For a long time. Then I asked him if I could have his keys for a second so I could go do that, and he said sure. Then he didn't go inside, so I asked if he could get changed now so I could get his keys when he went inside, and he went inside, so I asked for his keys, and he said no, hold on, let me go with you. So he was changing and it was taking a long time and I wanted to help outside and eat and be warm and take pictures so I asked again and fnally got his keys, ran to his car, and got my stuff.

So I came back to the room and got myself in order and put my camera somewhere I could get to it and found my way back outside to where we were loading and I took it out of its case and I tried to turn it on and it didn't respond. So I fiddled with it a little bit and tried again and it didn't work. I fiddled with it some more and it still didn't work. No matter what I did, it wouldn't work. And there were so many things I had wanted pictures of. I wanted pictures of our truck and of all of us loading and of Bryce's face against the red brake lights of the truck and Brook hugging/protecting the bass drum from the rain while holding Rod's sticks because he went to hit on girls for more than an hour but I couldn't take any of the pictures. I was very upset. Of all the times for my camera to break, it had to be at my very first performance with Penn State.

I tried and tried to fix it every way I knew how but it still wouldn't work. I put it in rice to dry it and that didn't work either. The memory card was fine. Maybe I'll post its last picture sometime. I put it in my memory box when I got back to State College. My Canon SD600 Digital Elph from Christmas in 2006. I'll miss that camera.

Peace out.